Booking and appointments

A system for reserving time or resources: availability rules, bookable slots, confirmations, reminders, and cancellations. Preventing double-booking across time zones is the hard part.

You can change every choice once the builder opens.

Core features for the MVP

Bookable resources with opening hours and exceptions
Availability calculated from rules, existing bookings, and buffer time
Customer-facing booking flow showing only genuinely free slots
Confirmation and reminder messages by email
Cancellation and rescheduling within a policy window
Staff diary view across day, week, and resource
Correct handling of time zones and daylight saving changes

Left for later

Deposits and prepayment at booking time
Recurring bookings
Waiting list that offers a freed slot automatically
Two-way sync with an external calendar

Recommended stack

Section	Recommended
Language	TypeScript
Frontend framework	Next.js
UI and styling	Tailwind CSSshadcn/ui
Backend	Next.js server
API style	Server actions
Database engine	PostgreSQL
Database provider	Neon
ORM and data access	Drizzle
Authentication	Clerk
Authorization and roles	Role-based access control
Security	Input validationRate limitingSecurity headers and CSPSecrets management
Background jobs and cron	Inngest
Email and notifications	ResendSMS with Twilio
Payments	Stripe
Hosting and deployment	Vercel
CI/CD	GitHub Actions
Monitoring and analytics	Sentry
Testing	VitestPlaywright
Extras	InternationalizationAccessibility (WCAG)BackupsDocumentation

Data model draft

Resource

The thing being booked: a person, a room, or a piece of equipment.

id
name
resourceType
timeZone
bufferMinutes
isActive

Has many AvailabilityRules
Has many Bookings

AvailabilityRule

When a resource is normally available, or explicitly unavailable.

id
resourceId
dayOfWeek
startTime
endTime
effectiveFrom
effectiveTo
isBlackout

Belongs to one Resource

Booking

One reserved interval. Stored in UTC with the original time zone kept.

id
reference
resourceId
customerId
serviceId
startsAtUtc
endsAtUtc
bookedTimeZone
status
createdAt

Belongs to one Resource
Belongs to one Customer
Belongs to one Service

Service

What is being booked, and how long it takes.

id
name
durationMinutes
priceMinorUnits
currency
isActive

Has many Bookings

Customer

The person making the booking.

id
fullName
email
phone
notes
createdAt

Has many Bookings